Chilling by the bay
Mar. 4th, 2019 08:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spacealien_vampThe month of February seems to have gone by in a blur. It was relatively cold (about 10 degrees colder than average for the time of year) and very rainy. While that's great for the state's water supply, it also meant that I spent pretty much all my free time indoors playing board games with my parents.
March is when all the excitement happens. On Sunday, my parents and I had a day on the town in San Francisco. We started by browsing the farmer's market and shops at the Ferry Building in the morning, followed by a matinee performance of Hamilton. The cleverness of the lyrics was impressive and the choreography was stunning.
We had to duck out of the final few minutes of the musical to dash several blocks away for a lecture by noted travel writer Rick Steves. He spoke for nearly two hours about how to get the best experience out of a trip abroad, covering everything from planning and packing all the way through making the most of the sights and avoiding crowds. Following the lecture, we went across town to eat at a fancy restaurant.
The Rick Steves lecture was inspiring because my mother and I are about to set out on a trip to Japan starting next Saturday. We were each planning on taking a checked suitcase, but we were inspired by the lecture to pare down to a cabin bag for the airplane. It will be an interesting experience--ordinarily I go to Japan to buy as much stuff as possible, but this time we will mostly be sightseeing. We will also be taking along one of my neighbors, who is filling in for a friend who had to cancel. We'll spend time in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, and an overnight at the base of Mt. Fuji.
I'm hoping that by the time I get back it will have warmed up enough here to start planting seeds for the garden. I did several seedling pots at the beginning of February, but the weather has been so cold that they've still barely sprouted. On the bright side, that means I don't have to worry about how my plants are doing while I'm gone.
March is when all the excitement happens. On Sunday, my parents and I had a day on the town in San Francisco. We started by browsing the farmer's market and shops at the Ferry Building in the morning, followed by a matinee performance of Hamilton. The cleverness of the lyrics was impressive and the choreography was stunning.
We had to duck out of the final few minutes of the musical to dash several blocks away for a lecture by noted travel writer Rick Steves. He spoke for nearly two hours about how to get the best experience out of a trip abroad, covering everything from planning and packing all the way through making the most of the sights and avoiding crowds. Following the lecture, we went across town to eat at a fancy restaurant.
The Rick Steves lecture was inspiring because my mother and I are about to set out on a trip to Japan starting next Saturday. We were each planning on taking a checked suitcase, but we were inspired by the lecture to pare down to a cabin bag for the airplane. It will be an interesting experience--ordinarily I go to Japan to buy as much stuff as possible, but this time we will mostly be sightseeing. We will also be taking along one of my neighbors, who is filling in for a friend who had to cancel. We'll spend time in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, and an overnight at the base of Mt. Fuji.
I'm hoping that by the time I get back it will have warmed up enough here to start planting seeds for the garden. I did several seedling pots at the beginning of February, but the weather has been so cold that they've still barely sprouted. On the bright side, that means I don't have to worry about how my plants are doing while I'm gone.
